OH EM GEE ITS EROS! MY EROS!

Ok, check this pic out:

http://prometeus.deviantart.com/art/Eros-and-Psyche-7179569

That face! That is EXACTLY Eros' face in my novel! You don't even know!!! The kind of face....that you just want to slap!!! Of course I didn't deal with Psyche in my novel, so just ignore her. But the FACE, man, the FACE! I'm telling you, THAT is what made that dang guy SO much fun to write!!!!

Post-Novel Syndrome

I miss writing. A lot. Wah. :( But it's good I'm done, cuz I have no time. Sigh. I wanna wriiiiiite.
Haha I miss all my lame characters. Gah.

*wanders off*

*pokes jano project*

Proof? Ya want proof?

Click to enlarge, eh? And I switched the pic over on the right, cuz I got a winner version!!

Novel: pwned.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!! REACHED 50K!!!!!!!!!!!! Stephana est victor.

Yesh. I am happy. Too happy to express in a blog.

And actually, it's kinda fascinating, because I'm both relieved and burdened cuz now I have another novel-length manuscript to edit. O.o I'm also kinda sad cuz.....no more spending all my spare time with Dionysus. haha.

Peace out.

Come break me down, I dare ya! *music overload*

I'm on FYE-AHHHH!!!!!!
Pretty much my wordcount is....ermmm......over 46k. :D:D Which leaves less than 1000 a day from here on out!!! I'm thinking, maybe, possibly, that I can finish tomorrow, since both of our classes have been canceled. But I dunno. Maybe I should spend the extra time on studying.
But yeah I went to the coffee shop and wrote two 500-word random scenes to stick in, and then thought up another one which I wrote when I got home. :D I'm rocking this thing. And two of those scenes were HILARIOUS and I'm really happy with them. :D The other one was mostly word-padding, but oh well. I haven't even resorted to pirates or ninjas yet!!! O.o I was thinking I would have to today. And of course, there's always Leoj Arbod and Arthur Dent when I REALLY get off my rocker. :D
But yeah, feeling encouraged. I'm thinking it might be possible to finish this thing without resorting to disturbing and shady circumstances. haha.
Playing missmustang videos in the background is very stimulating to my creative processes, as well. You'd be surprised. *shameless plugging* Haha.
Oh man. Dionysus and the cats....priceless.

So yeah. I'm gonna win. Win this. Watch me. :D

The End. And then some.

WOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4k day, baby!!! That's what I'M talking about!!! :D Or even aboot!

Yeah so went to a write-in today. I'm really sad cuz the one at Second Cup near me got cancelled, and they're planning the after party to be in South Keys where I'd have to bus to, soooo I don't know if I'll make it to anything else. Wah. Ah well. Twas fun.
But YEAH!!! I wrote 4000 words! WHEEEE! Which brings me up to 43k, cuz I barely wrote at all yesterday. I officially reached the END of my story, though, which is bad but somehow isn't fazing me at all right now. I decided I'm going to go with the alternate ending deal. The first one will be "Pirates of the Mediterranean" and will feature Theseus and his Greeks. They'll discover their inner pirate and....well I don't know quite what they'll do yet. And then the other alternate ending will be "The Way of the Ninja" featuring Ariadne and Dionysus, cuz, come on, you always knew they were secretly ninjas. Haha.
Since I have about 7k left, I'll just have to write 3500 on each of those random side-stories. I think that's doable.
Oh yeah, to reach 43k I also went back and added in a couple scenes that I had considered doing before but didn't happen. Yays. I'm impressed my story lasted to 43k: I was expecting it to barely reach 35k. :P And hopefully when I go back and edit, there'll be lots of other scenes that I can add to. We'll see.
And having finished it, I feel like I've got a pretty decent story-arc, even if a lot of segments are rather crappily written. A lot of things will need to be added in, like I need scenes establishing the other Greek's personalities, cuz I really had no clue who they were when I started, and then at the end they suddenly all had lives. Haha.

But yeah, overall I'm SUPAH HAPPEH! :D

"What do you need the scoop for? Burying a body?"

Wordcount: Just past 38k.
Sanity: Wacko? I prefer unbalanced!!


I was walking to the mall this morning, and to keep myself from thinking about the cold part I ran through the rest of my plot in my head. It was actually VERY productive. I had been trying to decide how to wrap up Theseus' plotline, and also if/how I should wrap up the 13 youth's ....whatever, not really plotline but their fates, and I figured out how to do BOTH simultaneously, and it ended up being kinda cool too. So I'm happy. I haven't written it yet but I know what's going down.
I did finish the curse scene yesterday. That was good. Good progress. I've barely written today though because I think I'm going to finish. O.o Dang.

"Did you kill anyone?" "No...but I was ABOUT to!"

(click to enlarge)

Wordcount: 38333
Sanity: Very very strained.
Body count: BIG FAT ZERO!! This category is seriously affecting the one exactly previous.

Sooooo I'm still deathly afraid of my plot running out. I'll be honest. :D But Evan and my dad gave me the good idea of pulling a PotC:3 once my main plot is done: just make everyone pirates and do random things. That sounds like fun. I also could do an "alternate ending" with ninjas. :D You know it's a good idea. Just admit it.
But yeah Ariadne just woke up...I have to do the curse scene today...which I've been looking forward to for FOREVER bout now of course I'm afraid to do it in case I mess up.
Plus I'm not sure how much of Catullus I want to use in her curse. ARGH so complicated. Be strong. Must be strong.

Yeah but overall tis going well....once she curses, I can kill off a certain person. w00t! Bloooooood.....bloooooooooooood.

The full quote from the title of this entry:
"You two LEFT me in that den of sin! And Flippy was in there trying to kill people!"
"Did you kill anyone?"
"No....but I was about to!"

Like nothing else in the world

W00T!!! Freaking SWEET writing session tonight!
(my homework suffered a bit, but it's okay!!!! That's what the weekend is for!!!)
But yeah, you should all go to my nanowrimo profile and read my new excerpt. Eros is pretty much....hilarious. I love him.
Yeah so I caught up completely, to 35k!!! YAY!! And had tons of fun doing it. I'm still terrified that my story is going to finish before 50k, but I'm making a list of random scenes to go back and do, so I think it'll be okay. I really haven't been word-padding that much this year. No flashbacks, limited rambling, and only one or two dream sequences. :P
Anyway so yeah I'm very happeh abouts this. OH Adrastus was cool this time, too. I....yeah I like him again, haha. Ariadne's just kinda a moron, but she gets her sweet curse-scene soon, so it's okay. :D
Man, it's all coming together.
This, my friends, is why I write.

Fangirls, Egan M., and Nano-Numbness

I just want to rant! On all my blogs that ever were, are, and shall be!!!
On what topic?
Kuro/Fai fangirls. Seriously....ENOUGH, you debaucherous women!!! I swear, I'm going to explode one day from righteous, righteous, RIGHTEOUS anger. Men can be friends! It's true! I know it's hard to understand, but they can!!! Sacrificing limbs for your friends does not mean you're GHEYYYY!
Holyyyyy cow.
All right I'm done. Sorry, I know this is my writing blog, I just....am feeling emotionally strained in that area. LOL!

Ok so onto writing!!!
Here's something I posted on my personal blog, in response to a request for dirt on my older sister.....I thought it made sense to post it here as well.

The Mostly Fictional Adventures of Egan M.
Episode One

Disclaimer: Scandalous content used for comic purposes only, as well as to drive site traffic through the roof. Any resemblance to any persons, real or fictional, is mostly incidental and in no way my fault.

Egan M. was the very wise sister of a neurotic blogger. She lived in a vast barren desert and worked at a hospital. Living in her apartment with her were a small fuzzy rodent named Frosh and a slightly attractive cactus named Lepidus. Lepidus was not Greek, contrary to popular belief.
But this story is not about Lepidus. This story is about Egan M.
Egan M. also had a boss who communicated solely through fuzzy-quality conference videos with audio that sounded strangely remixed. This anonymity of her employer gave her some unease once in a while, but as Egan M. was in the medical profession in a vast barren desert, she did not feel it was important.
Egan M.'s life consisted mostly of bossing medical students around and being bossed around by senior doctors. She was often ordered to work late nights. Usually when she was working late nights, all alone in the vast (but not barren-there were lots of babies) hospital, her boss would call her and give her orders. One night, during one of these calls, her boss cleared his throat in an important way. "I have something to tell you," he said.

Who is Egan M.'s boss? Is she secretly working for a crime lord? Why the heck is Frosh in this story?
To Be Continued....

Yeah total randomness.
As far as Nanowrimo goes......
Well....it's kinda fascinating. Cuz everything was going fine, until I was like, "Dang it, there's no way my plot is going to last for 18k more words." So then I just kinda screeched to a halt. It's like by not writing, it'll stretch out to more words? lol. Sigh. I'm going to work on it though. Get 'er done.
Plus plot-wise I'm in the drug-happy moment before the trauma. :P Once I get into the trauma it'll be more fun.

9 days!! w00t!

Don't even talk to me about handmaidens.

WHEEEEE went to a write-in today!!! I wrote 3,000 while there which brings me up to 30k altogether. :D:D:D
Story-wise I accomplished a lot as well. I got them OFF of Crete (You don't even know how exciting that is) AND I got to write like THREE friendly dancing scenes! LOL! One of those being Ariadne and Dionysus, which was pretty much the funnest thing ever, cuz I love both of them. AND I got Adrastus a girlfriend, which just makes EVERYTHING better, LOL! So I no longer want to kill the poor guy. He can live.
*Adrastus breathes huge sigh of relief*

This is a random note on my writing style. When Susan proof-read my story for lit a while back, she noticed that I use commas a LOT! Like, a heck of a lot. Once she pointed it out to me I noticed it as well, and now I can't STOP noticing it! Haha. So as I've been editing Absence I've been deleting ALL commas unless they're crucial to the grammar. Yay! You'd think I would do that before, but you'd be surprised the amount of ways a comma can justify it's existence!!!

So altogether pretty happy about my writing life. :D The only thing I'm worried about is I really don't know if my story is going to last to 50k, especially considering how much I covered today in 3000. :P

"This isn't fear. This is anger."

Haha the title for this entry is so applicable to how I'm feeling about my writing. In general.

I just made the HUGE mistake of going through all my word docs related to the different stories I've written.
.....
I get attacked by SO many plot bunnies. Usually I'll get about 10 pages in, and then stop. But I keep them around, cuz there's some good things in some of them that I can use in the future.
Anywho. My complaint is my completely ambiguous outlines. A really old project, a fan-fiction actually (I can't believe I'm writing a fan-fiction.....but that's a defense for another day), that I really want to finish someday cuz I think it's got something there. Anyway, at the time I wrote like a half-page outline, so that in case I stopped working on it for a while (as I did) I would know what my thoughts were. But then, tonight, when I read it, it was SOOOO amibiguous! Pretty much NO help at all. It describes ONE big scene pretty thoroughly, and then, hahahaha, says, "Takes on other jobs. Eventually they find out about something hidden-" and then goes OFF into this other dude and what he's doing.
WHAT. TEH. HECK. I have NOOOO idea what that's even ABOUT! I know it's important to the plot, but besides that......something HIDDEN? *hysterical laughter*
Ohhhhhkay. So that plot needs a *tad* more help than I thought. Like, a lot. And I have noooo idea how to help it really at all.

Besides *that* doomed project, I edited a few more pages of my jano today in between classes, and I'm at 26,667 for my Nano. *happiness* For today I should be at 28,333, but I'm going to write-in tomorrow and am fairly confident I can get it all done there. They're almost...off...Crete. That is my ultimate goal for this weekend. Get them OFF the freaking island.
Oh yeah, Adrastus got SHOT! :D *happiness* I can't kill him, but I can sure as HECK bloody him up a bit.

"He's the brains, sweetheart!"

I have had an ATTACK of the most disturbing and lethal manner by STAR WARS! BADDDD situation!! Haha. Basically, Theseus and Adrastus had to get in the palace on Crete to rescue Ariadne, and I was having PROBLEMS with just getting them in. But then they rescued her and all these quotes from "A New Hope" TACKLED me. Rofl. So now we've got the whole "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" scene, and then the "Didn't you have a plan for getting out?" They didn't jump into a garbage chute, though. Actually I don't really know how they're going to escape. But then when Theseus tells them his plan, Adrastus pulls a line from ROAD TO EL DORADO! I KID YOU NOT! And they go off into that scene! You know the silly one on board the ship??? "So that's the plan then, is it?" "That's...pretty much it." "Well, I like it! So, how do we get on deck?" :P
Good times. But I've almost got my word quotaaaa for the day. Happy day.

Who knew ancient Greeks were also skilled barristos?

Whew so as I said in my earlier ecstatic post, I am halfway through my novel. I'm still deciding whether I'm halfway through with my story. I *really* want to finish it in 50,000 words without resorting to one line per scene. This is just really important to my happiness, and this is the first time I haven't been able to tell where it's going to end. The Tasliri one very likely won't be finished under 80,000, I'm thinking closer to 100,000. Absence is about 50,000. This one I really just can't tell if I'm going to run out of plot at 40k, or not be done at 50k.
Sooo yeah we'll see. I'm going to try my darndest, though.
Current locations of my main characters:
Ariadne: in prison (dang it, you're my only female lead, whatcha DOIN?)
Theseus and Adrastus: sneaking into the palace to rescue Ariadne (despite not knowing WHERE she is or if she's even arrested....all very contrived and confusing me a LOT!)
Dionysus: in Athens??? Whatcha DOIN, man??? Eating dinner with the king and TALKING and yelling at Celia when you're bored?? Lamesauce, man, lamesauce.

They just all have problems. They either have too much conflict going on or absolutely none. That's okay. We'll be okay.

In other news, I decided (as a creative exercise) to go through and name ALL fourteen of the luckless Athenian teenagers. Up to now I'd named like, three of them, all of those male. So I've got names for all now, and descriptions for about half of them. When I edit I'll have to add in some bits so that they're at least not a faceless nameless mass of Greekness.

OH yeah so last night Rosie and I went to Second Cup, and I took my notebook cuz I wanted to work through a scene in longhand for once. When we were there there were five employees behind the counter, three of them blond chicks and two of them VERY Greek-looking guys. So again, for entertainment, I decided one of them was Elpidios and the other one was Adrastus. Good times. And then I wrote down what they looked like, and made some further deductions on Adrastus and Elpidios' personalities based on those guys. Very educational. And they really DID look like how A and E looked in my head. Kinda creepy. Like Adrastus is the smaller, "pretty" one, and Elpidios is all big and ponderous. Fascinating. I wanted to use the chicks working, too, but none of them looked Greek at ALL. Hmph.

Note: I actually personalized this blog today! So you'll see a bunch of new stuff on the right, including a list of my projects, helpful writing books I use, links, etc. I'll add more stuff as I think of them. :D

ROAR! Come on, work with me!!!

I am officially HALFWAY through my novel!!

YAYYYSSS!!

*throws confetti*

Wonderful feeling.

And now I'm officially BURNT out. So I shall sleep.

Random character updates: Celia now must die. Adrastus is continuing to justify his existence. Elpidios is a man. Dionysus is insecure, emo, AND obsessed.

*sigh*

"I refused to acknowledge Fun-Man."

Wordcount: 20,610.
w00t!
Finally finished the minotaur fight scene today. :D Basically I had to get up early for Latin class and was suddenly struck with the NEED to finish it. So I sat down at my desk and Kendra helped me through it. That girl is helpful, I'm telling you. ;)
So that's all done. I'm very glad. Adrastus justified his existence, as well, so that's good.
But now I'm suspecting that I'm about to get stuck again. Dionysus is trying to sweet-talk Aegeus into spilling some beans, and I can't help thinking that a god would have a much more efficient and speedy way of doing it. Hum.
AND I have no idea how the Athenians are going to get out of the cave without getting slaughtered. Stupid Makidon. He wasn't supposed to be this smart, honestly. Sending soldiers to the stupid entrance....gah.

Sorry, I'm being incomprehensible. Long and short of it, I am mildly enjoying the story/characters, and it's going along pretty well. I have pretty good hopes of wrapping this up in a month. :D

"It fills my heart with sarcastic joy."

Wordcount: 18,334.

I had another unexpected character pop onto my screen today. His name is Proteus. I hate him.
......
I'm just feeling a bloodthirsty need to kill off someone. It needs to happen. The problem is, all of my characters are NOT expendable. Usually I have an armyful or a schoolful of nice fresh expendables. Not so in Greece! :P The only people I can even possibly kill are Makidon and Gregorios, who are evil so they're not even fun. Proteus, I could kill, but he's just a random kid at the palace, so that wouldn't be even be fun.
I'll be honest. I really want to kill Adrastus. Dang it. I liked him a lot when he first appeared, but we're really just not working out. Rofl right now he's screaming like a woman at Theseus to kill the Minotaur. Idiotic. And the more I try to keep from being an idiot, the more of an idiot he is!!
GAH!
Ok. I'm good. I'm really jealous of Amy and Christina's novels, actually. They're doing fun ones.
Now that I've complained and said absolutely nothing interesting, I'm leaving.

Bow-chikka wow-ow!

Wahahahaha so my new favorite thing to do when bored: think up highly creative ways of killing off Adrastus. I still really want to kill the poor guy, I just can't decide how to do it.
He could get killed by the Minotaur-unoriginal, but effective.
He could get killed from Fury-backlash, I'm thinking an illness on the ship on the way home to Athens.
He could get killed by DIONYSUS!!! I don't know how, or WHY! But he could!!!

Haha yes I have problems. BUT I'm all caught up now, thanks to the write-in!!! I love those things and highly recommend them to anyone doing nanowrimo. Do it. Go. :D

I've also figured out a ton more stuff for my MCs to do, should I run out of plot before 50k. :D All in all, it's looking good folks.

"You haven't killed anyone? Stephanie, are you feeling all right?"

Wordcount: 14,541

I'm not sure HOW I am only 500 words behind. That's like some sort of magical wordcount miracle. If you read my other blog, you know how busy I've been. Most of those words have been filler, though. I'm right in between two actiony places and I just can't make myself be VIOLENT! Haha.
The good news is, during the icon lecture last night I worked out some future plot issues, so that's good, especially since I've had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I'm not going to make it to 50k from pure lack of things to do, but I added several big bits to my outline so I think I might be okay. Might. The other good news (wait, that first one was good?) is that I have a write-in this afternoon. I'm not sure how much of it I'm going to, cuz we have the film night tonight and no one seems to know when we're leaving, but yeah. So my goal for the write-in...let me think. I think I got a bit over 3k in 21/2 hours last time, soooo I should get at least 2k done. At least. And that'll bring me back up to on track. That's if I don't just stare at the screen for two hours. :P
Adrastus is still alive, for people who care about him. Wahahahaha. I think that's my problem, I haven't KILLED anyone yet.

Guess he'll die another day

Wordcount: 12,067
Deaths: none yet-I'm seriously considering killing of Adrastus one of these days. I think I'm getting weak in my old age, cuz he'd be a PERFECT dude to die, it would be super traumatic for most of the people in the story, but.....I don't know if I can do it. :(
Sanity: Strained.

As you might have noticed, I've written virtually nothing in the last couple of days. There's two reasons for that: this week is like five times as busy as a normal week, and it's Week Two of Nanowrimo, which is the worst week ever. But I'm not behind YET, thanks to my sweet leaps ahead in Week One. I am so together this year.
My favorite character to write is still Dionysus. :D He's so entertaining.
Plot-wise, I've completely exhausted every possible thing they can do in Crete *besides* fight the Minotaur. I think that's my problem; it's a hard part. Cuz it's big. And very action-y, which I've never excelled at. :P
But, alas, there's nothing else for them to do. Off to fight the Minotaur, they must go.

Shiny. Let's be authors.



Just because.


"Me and Adrastus did WHAT?"

Wordcount: 12,046.
Deaths: Still none, although I'm not sure how Gregorios survived *that*
Sanity: I am 100% certain of my sanity. Which is a bad sign, because crazy people never admit they're crazy.

Ok so I think I need to knock on wood after I say this, but like...this novel is coming so easily for me. I've only had two brief (like, extremely) crises of writer's block. I mean, I guess a lot of it is the fact that I have a solid (even if it's pretty broad) outline. But even so, I'm having a LOT of fun with this one. There's a lot of room to mess around with everyone. And all my characters are consistently fun to write! That might change, but 12k in, I'm feeling pretty good. :D Usually by now I'm ready to throw them all down a large dark hole in the ground. :P
The fact that I'm basically still two days ahead doesn't hurt my general feeling of happiness either.
The only problem I'm having right now is that I can't look two of my characters in the face anymore. LOL! I like them, but....yeah. After somebody made a certain comment about them, they're hard to write in the same place cuz I'm just WAY overthinking their behavior. Whew. Good times, having awkward silences with your characters.

Swing a little more on the devil's dancefloor

Wordcount: 5,657
Deaths: none yet
Unexpected characters: 3, Adrastus, Elpidios, Gregorios, and Mikadon. Adrastus is my fave. :D I think I'm unconsciously drawing a lot of inspiration from Matsuda from DN for Adrastus. He's really earnest, likeable, naive, and cowardly so far but I think he's going to get braver. That's why I chose his name, which means "courageous." Gregorios and Mikadon are going to be in the "Deaths" category eventually, mwahahaha. Dionysus is going to have to deal with them, the baddies.
Caffiene consumed: Not much, I think two Barqs since I've begun?
Sanity: Surprisingly healthy.

"He's like all the Greek gods rolled into one!"

SO! Nanowrimo has officially begun.
I got a good start, writing more than 3000 words the first day (the daily quota is 1667). Yesterday I only wrote about a thousand more, so today I still have only about 700 to write. :P The first week is always the best though, because you're all inspired and junk. I'll slow down a LOT next week. *cringes at the thought of week two*
My story, for anyone who doesn't yet know, is a novelization of the Greek legend of Ariadne and Theseus and the Minotaur. Basically Theseus and some other Athenians are going to be fed to the monster Minotaur, but Ariadne falls in love with him cuz she's an idiot and helps him kill it. Then they all escape and after a few more adventures, Theseus abandons her on an island. Pretty emo stuff. But, as my RA says, "But then she gets to marry the god of wine, so who's complaining?" ;)
There's a lot of creative wiggle room outside of the legend, fortunately, so I've been inventing a few characters and plan on doing more. I've got Adrastus, one of the Athenians. I have NO idea what he's going to contribute yet, but he's named, so knowing me he'll do something. And then there's Celia. According to what I wrote the other day, she's "one of those women who could just slither into men's laps." She's a Maenad, so meh, can't expect much better.
My most amusing moment so far was putting Dionysus up on a statue of Zeus. Basically, I was writing about a feast that the Cretans were having, and I needed Dionysus up high somewhere where he could see everyone, and just thought "Dude! Zeus! A statue of Zeus!" Which works cuz Zeus is Dionysus' father, and basically an idiot, so it makes sense D would sit on him. :D I just have giggle fits every time I picture it. *feels nerdy* Dionysus and Celia are just really really fun to write.
Theseus is easy to write, surprisingly. From the way I'm writing him, overconfident, overnoble, and kinda a foolish hero type, I think I can realistically imagine him abandoning Ariadne later, given the right reasons.
Ariadne is being very problematic. Like, the story starts out and almost immediately she's falling in love with Theseus and deciding to go so far as to abandon her family to help him? It seems very unrealistic to me, but there's no way to develop her character before this without having a long and random like....history chapter on her. *Sigh*
So in a nutshell that's how that's all going.